Madame Vert
Motivation: Find a place in the Silver Pact without submitting to anyone Caste: Casteless Anima Banner: Green tree strider amidst shifting silver lights and dark shadows Spirit Shape: Tree Strider (Tell - Scales about the eyes) ----- Rallin Vert initially thought she was lucky to marry a savant of the Salinan Society, a far-flung association of thaumaturges seeking occult wisdom in the natural world (see The Books of Sorcery, Vol. III—Oadenol’s Codex, pp. 126-127). Drashig Tarn was an intelligent and learned man—but never quite intelligent and learned enough to excel among his peers. It gnawed at him. Tarn also treated his wife like a slave. Vert endured her marriage for 10 years. Along the way, she found that she was smarter than her husband. Certainly, she took greater care. Vert gradually trained Tarn to let her fashion all his talismans and measure the ingredients for his potions. She thereby likely saved many lives among his clients. Freedom came when Tarn decided to summon a demon, brushing aside all of Vert’s diplomatically phrased objections. Once summoned, the demon promptly killed him. Vert, however, both Exalted and remembered Tarn’s gilded demon scorching celestial spear. The demon didn’t stay long. The widow Vert spent the next few years discovering what she was. Small gods and elementals in the nearby forest told her about the Moonchildren. The lore in Tarn’s library, along with her own insight and experience, eventually led to her self-initiation as a Salinan sorcerer. In time, the Silver Pact found Madame Vert. So did a Wyld Hunt. Madame Vert felt grateful for the rescue; less so when one rescuer said that as a sorcerer, she would certainly need to join the Crossroad Society (as he had) and become a No Moon (as he was). Memories of her controlling husband inspired Madame Vert to tell the Lunar what he could do with his caste tattoos, the Crossroad Society and the Silver Pact as a whole. When she cooled down, Madame Vert thought better of the last point. She resumed contact with other Lunars but held off on accepting a caste: She vows not to surrender one drop of freedom until she knows completely what she gains and loses. Until then, she works to prove her worth to the Silver Pact as a casteless Lunar… and to make every Moonchild who calls her “Unblooded” or “Bastard of Luna” eat his words. Madame Vert finds her personality shifting with her shape. In her human form, she carefully maintains the identity of Tarn’s meek widow. She makes a modest living as a calligrapher-scribe, while other Salinan thaumaturges use her late husband’s library and lab free of charge. This enables her to maintain contact with the local chapter and gain information from them. In animal or beastman forms, however, Vert revels in her freedom and becomes daring and sensuous. In Limit Break, this aspect of her personality runs wild, and she does things she later regrets. (However, the mayor’s handsome, muscular and extremely eligible son doesn’t regret the moonlit night when Madame Vert broke into his room. He thinks he coupled with a goddess and wants to find her again.) Madame Vert regards herself as her city’s protector. In this capacity, she terrorizes (though rarely kills) assorted threats to society. Her greatest adventure to date involved driving a gang of petty brigands from the nearby forest. She also offers other Lunars her skills as a sorcerer: As yet, she knows only countermagic and elemental summoning, but it’s a start. In her human form, Madame Vert looks like a shorter than average woman in her late 20s with straight brown hair, large eyes and a very small mouth and chin. She still wears a white linen mourning-shawl over her shapeless blouse and long skirt. Her spirit form is a tree strider, a long-limbed, arboreal relative of the more common claw strider. Madame Vert’s war form stands seven feet tall on long, taloned legs. Green scales cover her body, and a crest of long spines replaces the hair on her fanged, crocodilian head. A long, lashing tail extends behind her. In this form, Madame Vert does not wear more than jewelry and a few wisps of translucent silk. She believes her war form is far more beautiful than her human form, and when she applies Essence to this belief, she makes it true.